Author: JP

Freewheeling about social media

This post is about Twitter, and yet it’s not. I’m trying to deal with a bigger issue.

First, do take a look at these two posts: Phillie Casablanca’s Ten Commandments and Paul Downey’s Twit or Twerp? Both are excellent; I have the privilege of working with both these guys, and I’m delighted that we have people who really try and understand what’s happening with social media.

While the discussions in the post are primarily about Twitter, I think the issues they discuss extend further. It’s worth looking at three aspects of any such discussions:

1. Prescription. Phil talks about his discomfort with the word “commandment”, and how he looked at using “etiquette requests”, but felt that it didn’t have the requisite ring or zing. We need to be careful in positioning any of these statements as guidelines rather than diktats. There are many people using Twitter who wouldn’t necessarily have the faintest idea what IRC was, and wouldn’t know a microformat if it hit them in the face; this doesn’t make them bad or stupid. In fact one of the biggest attractions of contemporary social media is the lowering of historical barriers, and we have to make sure that we, collectively, concentrate on providing advice and assistance and best practice rather than prescription or diktat. We need to be heading towards a place where we can say “If you want to get the best value out of Twitter, and if you want to make it easy for others to obtain value from Twitter, then you should consider doing the following things, and not doing the following things”.  That’s how I read the two posts, and I will strive to become more of a twit and less of a twerp.

2. Polarisation. For whatever reason, the industry I have found myself in just loves polarised debate. Everything, just about everything, is 0 or 1, black or white. Big-endians versus Little-endians. What’s happening right now is that our walls are coming down. “Vendor” power is shifting to the customer. “IT Department” power is shifting to the customer. “Standards Body” power is shifting to the customer. While we need new standards, we need to be sure that we don’t pave the cowpaths, create new sets of polarised standards “on behalf of the customer”; we need to be comfortable with letting the customer decide. Sometimes it’s going to feel like helping a child grow up and discover things for himself; as “parents” we cannot do the learning for them. [Reminds me of my favourite JSB quote: How long does it take for a five year old to become a six year old? One year]. For people like me, it’s about getting out of the way. For some of you, it may be about recognising the continuing existence of “grey”.

3. Personalisation. For many of the people playing with these tools for the first time, there are no rules. They will find ways of using the tools that the creators of the tools haven’t considered; they will find ways of making the tools their own. Whatever we advise, whatever good practices we suggest, whatever standards we come up with, we need to keep one perspective in mind. The newbie isn’t wrong. Just different. We need to encourage the newbies rather than reinvent the ivory towers and holy-of-holies of the past.

Lack of prescription. Avoidance of polarisation. Support for personalisation. These Ps are key, whatever else happens.

Along with passion. And patience. Lots of both.

We’re on the verge of a new golden age, centred around community and participation, as the underlying technology stabilises and becomes invisible. Let’s make sure we get there.

Old Man’s River: The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N

One of the principles I’m trying to stay with in this series is to ensure that whatever I recommend is generally available; while I want to share “long tail” choices rather than “hit culture” ones, there is no point my doing so unless you can borrow it or buy it.

Recommendation 5: (Book)

The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. The first of a pair of books by Leo Rosten, published during the late 1930s as a compendium of articles in the New Yorker. I was fourteen when I read them, and I was fascinated by the sheer talent of the then 24-year-old Rosten. He was able to make me “hear” the accents of European immigrants wrestling with the complexities of English (albeit the American kind) while adjusting to their new and exciting world.

At that point, I’d never left India myself, and my “knowledge” of the world beyond India’s borders was marginal: largely influenced by film and magazine and book, with the occasional smattering of real-live tourists. What Leo Rosten did was to conjure up the atmosphere in the English language class in a remarkable way, somehow giving me a vicarious feel for the different cultures in that classroom, the personalities, the battles, the joys and despairs.

It is rare enough for a book to be able to do this. Rarer still for one firmly placed in the “Humour” category (I cannot bring myself to spell it Humor). And even rarer for one originally written as a series of articles.

The book is easy to read, you can choose to read it stand-alone chapter by chapter, you don’t even need to read them in sequence. But if you wanted to, you could read it cover to cover in one sitting. There is some overlap with the content and style of George Mikes, another humorist I rate highly. I cannot recommend it highly enough for someone who wants to delve into the nuances of immigrant cultures in newly-adopted lands.

Freewheeling about visualisation and manipulation tools and support for diversity

Ever since the Wii crossed our threshold, I’ve been fascinated by it. But I’ve kept away… I’m not entirely happy with the potential interaction between WiiMotes and ICDs. Nevertheless, just watching people young and old playing on the Wii, from sports to fitness to education, I felt there was something about the interaction that would have an enterprise payoff. [In the past, I’ve had a similar feeling about EyeToy, but it only went as far as considering its use as an icebreaker at offsite meetings.]

Today, thanks to a tweet from PRGeek, I went and took a look at this video. Head tracking for desktop VR displays using a WiiMote.

We’re not talking games any more. More and more, we will see enterprises spend real money on usability, on visualisation tools, on ways to support people who would otherwise be disenfranchised.

Incidentally, thanks to a tweet from LifeKludger, I went and took a look at this. Pointui. Providing “touch” features …. when you don’t have a finger….

We’re going to see a lot more of this; opportunities for us to take “consumer” tools and transform them, mutate them, into things the enterprise can use. But not every enterprise will be able to use them; we will need to understand a lot more about open architectures and reusable components before we get there; we will need to be much more agnostic about devices and platforms before we get there; and we will need to have understood the importance of enfranchising an army of people currently sidelined by our incompetence.

The eyes have it

Yesterday, as I came through immigration at Heathrow Terminal 3, the Border and Immigration Agency officer was very helpful, commenting that I should take a look at the IRIS Scheme and consider signing up. So I did. And I probably will sign up.

And in that strange serendipitous way these things happen, I came across this completely unrelated site while Stumbling (I try and Stumble for 15 minutes a day, freshens up my thinking). if you ever wanted to know just how different irises are, i guess Rankin’s research will convince you. I found the images fascinating. Here are a few examples:

Eye Scapes - 01Eye Scapes - 02Eye Scapes - 03

Rankin himself seems to be an unusual guy. I have no idea what his first name is, doesn’t appear anywhere that I could see. His bio makes interesting reading.

Old Man’s River: Electra Glide in Blue

Okay, time to move slightly further afield than is usual, even for me.

Recommendation 4: (film)

Electra Glide in Blue. Great movie, great soundtrack, great style. Every now and then, a movie comes along, and the critics say “that one’s going straight to video”. Well, when I saw this film, my immediate reaction was ‘this one’s going straight to cult classic”.

Music fans shouldn’t be surprised. The firm was produced and directed by James William Guercio. Now why does that name appear familiar? Because it was he who produced Blood Sweat and Tears and Chicago. That will give you an idea of what the music is like, and what the pace of the film is, its atmosphere and ambience. Oh, and by the way, Pete Cetera and Terry Kath have roles in the film, as also Walter Parazaider and Lee Loughnane. What’s that make, 25% of Chicago, they were such a large band….

Electra Glide in Blue. A must-see if you like Chicago or even BS&T; if you like motorcycles; if you like good-cop-befriends-hippie plots; if you like your suspense seventies-style. Oddly enough, you should think about seeing it if you were a Hill Street Blues fan: Frank Furillo has the movie poster adorning his office wall.